Digital printing or screen printing/offset printing has previously been used on surfaces of ready-made glass and plastics bottles. These ready-made bottles are filled by drink manufacturers in bottling plants. Hitherto, bottles have not usually been printed on site in a bottling plant, the first plants for this procedure are, however, at the planning stage. Instead, bottles have previously been labeled. In this respect, it should be noted that the production process within bottling plants has a sophisticated logistics and has mutually coordinated machines which cooperate in an interlinkage. A subsequent positioning of new systems/machines is complicated and is impracticable in most cases.
The term “machines in an interlinkage” is understood as meaning machines which are constructed in a processing line, via which the bottles are transported from one machine to the next and are processed. In the context of this description, the term “bottle” is also to be understood as a synonym for any form of container which is to be treated. The treatment can contain the steps of production, cleaning, printing and/or filling.
The present inventor has recognized a disadvantageous effect which appears during the integration of the printing of, for example plastics bottles into existing plants, is that in the meantime, a so-called block system has become established for the plants, in which block system the bottle is filled in a machine which is mechanically interlinked with the blowing machine (or more generally: stretching machine) directly, for example immediately, after the stretching procedure, in particular by blowing. The bottle is produced in a known manner by stretching the preform, which is configured such that after being stretched, in particular by blowing, the bottle receives the desired form. If appropriate, the preform can be heated for this purpose.
Thus, the finished bottle could only be printed on after a block system of this type (i.e. with a full bottle), which has the disadvantage that if a bottle explodes (which admittedly does not happen often), significant damage can be caused in the printing machine. For this reason, this arrangement is out of the question for bottles with contents which are under an internal pressure. Bottles containing still drinks also have an artificial internal pressure due to the addition of liquid nitrogen to increase the stability of the bottle (in particular a plastics bottle which is increasingly common in practice) and to thereby make it possible to stack palettes.
Furthermore, the present inventor has recognized that it is a disadvantage of the known systems that a very large number of bottling plants have already been installed, the conversion of which to digital printing by additional printing machine integration and reconstruction of the plant would entail considerable costs due to investments in additional carriers and buffers and to the standstill of the plant during reconstruction.
Thus, digital printing directly on the bottle or container can only reasonably become established with the installation of a new filling plant. However, it is impossible for a brand manufacturer of drinks to suddenly and extensively change their range of products in order not to confuse the consumer with two different types of decoration, which would inevitably be the case if the change had to be carried out over a relatively long period of time.